![]() As the dominance of the carriers became more and more apparent, even the super battleships were rendered helpless and obsolete against them. Subsequently, however, even these giants of the sea were shown to be no match for aircraft carriers. Displacing 70,000 tons at full load, with an armament of nine 18.1 inch guns, the ships were the largest battleships to ever be constructed, with no other battleship as-of-today having ever matched them in armor, weight and firepower. Two were built at the beginning of the conflict, after Japan itself became involved. Work started on it before World War II and five such ships were eventually planned to constitute the Yamato-class battleships. It called for a large battleship design to attain one-on-one superiority of Japanese ships against any other battleship. The birth of an ultranationalist movement in Japan called for an expansion of the Imperial Japanese Navy to include huge naval vessels to cow down the rivals of the country. However, after Japan exited the League of Nations it refused to renew the naval treaty. The treaty placed certain restrictions on the displacement and the number of Capital ships a country was allowed to have. After World War I, the major naval powers of the world at that time ( United States, Britain, Japan, France and Italy) signed the Washington Naval Treaty to contain the naval arms race that had begun during the First World War.
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